March 21, 2016 – a temporary statement with references. A full statement will be published in summer 2016.

The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.1

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.2,3,4

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.2,4,5

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.6

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.5

6. Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.7,8,9,10

7. Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT – affirming countries.11 What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures that they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Michelle A. Cretella, M.D.
President of the American College of Pediatricians

Quentin Van Meter, M.D.
Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians
Pediatric Endocrinologist

Paul McHugh, M.D.
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital

References:

1. Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development, “Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Disorders of Sex Development in Childhood.” Intersex Society of North America, March 25, 2006. Accessed 3/20/16 from http://www.dsdguidelines.org/files/clinical.pdf.

Of course I’d heard of Falwell’s endorsement of Trump a while back; but I hadn’t seen his reasoning. I had it explained to me yesterday.

With the administration packed with Christians, Liberty University was teetering on the verge of financial collapse, and the Falwells sought out the best ‘numbers’ people without regard to their commitment to Christ. The University flourished financially as a result. This lesson informed his decision to endorse Mr. Trump.

I’m not the brightest fella, and I certainly haven’t had the privilege of being educated at a Christian University, but a couple of thoughts occur to me:

What an odd dilemma to affirm as a University President. Apparently Liberty University and other Christian institutions of ‘higher learning’ are unable to turn out financial professionals’ that are worthy of hire. According to this educator, ‘Best’ (and let’s be honest; by ‘best’ we mean ‘good’ and ‘competent.’ I doubt Liberty has attracted the ‘best.’) and ‘Christian’ seem to be mutually exclusive. In the end one must choose. Whatever flourishing might mean for Liberty University (and it seems to center around money), its President assumes it to be a failure when it comes to actually educating- at least on a consistent basis. Someone may seek out and hire graduates of Christian Universities, but Liberty isn’t interested. It wants competent employees.

And granting the assumption that Trump is a great businessman… is our nation’s greatest problem really financial? Really? Or are our budgetary woes just a symptom of something else? Are our greatest threats as a people really monetary? That is the concern that ‘trumps’ all others? I guess it depends on what one believes life is about. I certainly recognize the narrative, which Mr Falwell’s diagnosis assumes. It’s the Christian Gospel’s great competitor. That being the case, I can only think that the homeless Messiah (and his pitiful, destitute and wretched followers) must have the sincere pity of those who share Mr. Falwell’s opinion. It’s a shame Trump wasn’t there to save them.

“What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death.

He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that “they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.”- Russell Kirk

Noting that the NT word translated “Grace” is simply “Gift,” Barclay goes on to enumerate how a gift might be perfected. Hugely important stuff.

…Barclay is working out the Pauline notion of grace under the rubric of anthropological treatments of the gift, and he argues that the notion of “grace” can be perfected in regard to the giver, the gift, or the reception of the gift. He enumerates six “perfections” of grace: superabundance; singularity, the notion that benevolence is the giver’s exclusive attribute; priority, in which the gift of grace is seen as always prior to the initiative of the recipient; incongruity, the notion that a gift is given “without regard to the work of the recipient”; efficacy, which highlights the fact that the gift “fully achieves what it was designed to do”; and non-circularity, the notion that the gift does not demand a response (70-75).

Barclay emphasizes that these perfections do not entail one another: “To perfect one facet of gift-giving does not imply the perfection of any or all of the others” (75). It would, for example, be possible to perfect the priority of grace without perfecting its incongruity; not only possible, but actual, since this is pretty much late medieval soteriology in a nutshell. Yet this non-entailment is often forgotten, and discussions of grace slip from one perfection to another, or assume that perfecting grace in one dimension implies perfection elsewhere. A lack of clarity about these varieties of perfection produces confusion. For those who define grace in terms of one perfection (say, incongruity), a congruent grace is no grace at all. Lack of clarity also means that different conceptions of grace are viewed as differences in emphasis on grace.

This sixfold typology provides Barclay with a powerful tool to examine conceptions of grace in Christian theology, in contemporary Pauline studies, and in Judaism….

…the doctrines of modernity, secularism, individualism, Americanism, liberalism — these aren’t New Paganisms. They’re Christianisms. “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds,” as C.S. Lewis put it, and he’s right: Our cultural stink doesn’t waft from newly sprouted ideologies, but from a rotten Christianity. We are “post-Christian” in the specific sense of being from Christianity — always referred to a Christian past, in thought as in history.

Our atheism is a Christian atheism (evangelical and fideistic), our murderous tendencies are Christian tendencies (compassionate and performed out of love), and our sexual issues are Christian sexual issues (deriving from the Christian elevation of sexuality to the level of freedom and love). Our Americana doctrines are the devolution and deconstruction of Christian doctrines: The Catholic understanding of religious freedom (a freedom which exists for the discovery of the truth about God) is not simply threatened by but devolves into secularism (a freedom which doesn’t exist for anything, but simply is, respected as an end in itself). The Catholic understanding of the equal dignity of humanity (established by our common status as icons of the Creator) isn’t a just a rival concept to liberal equality — it buckles into a conception of equality as the equal rights of the individual, granted by the State, as means of protection from the ill-intent of every other individual. In short, the Catholic hasn’t washed up on the beaches of a Pagan land — he lives in the Land of the Broken Church. He stands amidst the wreck of Christian doctrines, and is assaulted on every side, not by the anti-Church, but by the Church that has forgotten it is Church, a post-Church trying its best to prop up the values Christianity introduced to the world — universal love, charity, preference for the poor, freedom of conscience, the dignity of the person over the State, etc. — without any actual beliefs in the reasons for these values…

The Prime directive to love my neighbor (including my enemies) does not require a pacifist response in the face of violence against others.

The responsibility to defend the innocent does not relieve me of the obligation to love my enemies.

The current ‘Just War’ legal model of permission is different and often in conflict with the ancient Christian discipline of striving to become the sort of human being who naturally and virtuously handles the responsibilities of being a ‘just warrior.’

Loving my neighbor does not require that I support the first or most obvious concrete proposal of how to do so/ It is appropriate to question short sighted ‘obvious’ solutions with the potential of creating greater evil in the long term.

The Christian duty to love my neighbor begins at home and works outwards. This is not an excuse that relieves anyone of their obligation to love. It is an effectual focusing of the obligation, which is made necessary by the limitations that come with being finite creatures.

Demands made of me that I love a neighbor who is far away seems to inevitably be accompanied by inattention to the needy neighbor that is lying under our own noses. Claims that one would ‘shelter every refugee that you send me’ seem rather uncharitable when one considers the homeless that surround us already.

Self-righteous public justification is a perennial problem.

In the end the true enemy is other than any human being.

Appeals to scriptural concerns regarding refugees seem never to mention the scriptural context and assumptions that accompany those concerns e.g. “Israel certainly had plenty of people of non-Israelite origin living there. However, they did not just become naturalized citizens, were distinguished from Israelites in many ways in their identity, rights, and privileges, and were not really able to make Israel into a multicultural society. There were prohibitions on intermarriage. There were laws to prevent land from being alienated from Israelite owners. There were restrictions on the practice of other religions and strangers had to abide by practices such as that of the Sabbath, the removal of leaven, abstaining from blood. They could suffer the death penalty for blasphemy. Resident aliens were particularly subject to conscription for the construction of public works and for the most manual of labour, as we see in the verse after the one Hughes quotes, where Solomon calls up every one of the resident aliens to bear burdens and hew stones to construct the temple. Strangers were also typically menial workers (Deuteronomy 29:11).” Alastair Roberts (See comment).

Questioning the wisdom of admitting immigrants of a particular ideology does not relieve me of the obligation to cheerfully attend to the needs of those immigrants who are here; nor of figuring out how to offer real aid and relief to those who are not.

Even in situations where there is no ‘legitimate’ grievance, sinful human nature resorts to violent scapegoating based upon differences. The more obvious the difference, the more likely the conflict.

In Christ (i.e. in his body the church) all scapegoating is abolished and natural identities relativized.

It is a mistake (that ignores an apostolic admonition) to expect those who reject the Christian gospel to live as if they embrace it. It is a mistake of an irresponsible kind to build public policy on the expectation that those who reject the Christian gospel will live as if they embrace it.

The prevalent, popular ‘common sense’ American conception of ‘religion’ is a myth of secular American Civil religion that is in conflict with the lived experience of humanity in general and historic catholic Xianity in particular.

National ideologies and narratives are in no way consistently distinguishable from ‘religious’ ones

‘Religions’ do not agree about the nature of ultimate reality, humanity or human flourishing. Asserting otherwise is a clear faith commitment, which distinguishes itself from many other faith commitments by being irrational. In this obvious sense religions are not equal.

Islam is distinctly and radically rooted in a violent origin, expansion and ideology, which are clearly at odds with the Western inheritance regarding the Transcendentals, humanity and human flourishing. Denying this aspect of Islam is dishonest.

Many (apparently the majority) of Muslims have moved towards a more ‘Western’ way of interpreting their own inheritance. This is the reality, and the sincerity and legitimacy of their understanding ought not to be questioned.

Every adherent of Islam is an encounter away (whether through a book, media or personal interaction) from discovering the more ancient and violent understanding of their inheritance.

As with most paradigm shifts, it is a felt experience (whether a negative one regarding the community that one is leaving; or a positive one in the community that one is joining) that ultimately lies behind the new identification.

In summary-

“My Christian faith demands of me—and my country, I believe—a response of generosity, charity, compassion, and hospitality toward all who are now fleeing the brutality and horror of ISIS. But this judgment need not entail unrestricted and indiscriminate admission of refugees. Other considerations, moral and political, are also legitimately in play here. These considerations need to be thoughtfully identified and discussed, without fear of being labeled xenophobic, anti-American, or whatever.